'I had delicious hot waffles, butter, and syrup at the Two Girls' Waffle House.' This is a caption on a photograph in my recently obtained copy of 'Alaska -- Carpenter's World Travels'. (The Addington Coffee Co. sells coffee and gives away books, a practice to be commended.) The author is one Frank G. Carpenter, Litt.D., F.R.G.S. And 'reading Carpenter is seeing the world.'
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On the 10th October 1939 the above-named wrote to The Times about the 3,000th cryptic crossword published in that newspaper. He mentions a clue from an earlier crossword that had impressed him greatly: Clue. -- 'It is topping to kiss a monkey.'
Answer. -- Apex. He finishes the letter with this: 'Bravo! Sir. Kindly carry on through the difficult days that lie ahead.' (From 'The First Cuckoo' (London, 1976)) You see yourself, a gilded one
glide upon a waving plain The centre of, and all disdain But fear and fall, and pick-it-up Toss the lot and sham dismay You'll take the morning But you perish the day. I have been all those things and all at the same time as well as not at the same time.
There are days that must be noted, even if you cannot say why or do not wish to say why. The days are now short, as a winter's day is, and the nights are long and cold but easy to sleep through.
There are days when memories bubble up freely and fill the mind and then there are days where all the memories hide away and are only revealed with great effort, and some uncertainty. There are days when hope and an undercurrent of joy hold sway and there are days when cool reason keeps a firm hand on things. There are days when you can say what you need to say and are heard, and there are days when the words are afraid to come forth, and there is no understanding. But there are some days where no words are needed to understand. Years ago, when I lived in the Australian bush and had many young cousins, my mother and I would some times look after some of the kin. Usually my mother, as chief aunt, carried the burden alone but occasionally I, the chief cousin, was home from boarding at high school and was happy to help out. The range of foibles presented by these cousins was catered to as best as my mother's stern sense of child-rearing would allow. It turns out that some children survive perfectly well on a diet of luncheon meat (known as 'Devon'), unset red jelly to drink, and the occasional Sao cracker with vegemite on it.
So, generally speaking, to be looked after by Aunty Jen at 'Woodlands' was, I think, a well-tolerated and acceptable option. However, on one notable occasion, Miss JA (aged about three) took violent exception to being carried off in the yellow Kingswood (with a G-U-L numberplate) and wailed in the back seat (no child restraints back then). "You're going the wrong way," she cried over and over again, as we set off in a westerly direction. (Things are simple when you are three.) To hear other people's dreams is usually killingly dull. And my own are the same to others, I know. As a child I had extraordinarily vivid dreams, in terrifying technicolour. Other people's dream stories seemed horribly pedestrian in comparison to mine, so full as they were of whirling planets and tennis courts being strafed. I hardly ever dreamed about people and I still don't. Last night I had a dream that is lingering in my brain. I wish I could recapture it fully but its vividness is seeping away. I've never had a dream like it. I suppose my brain is just clearing out the files and putting them in order for future reference but it seems that it was more than that. I can only describe it as a wall of words, with some Latin, a little reference to France and a question on a pendant.
Something quite exciting happened today. When I say exciting I think I probably mean something else entirely but that will do for now. But this thing of which I speak (write, whatever) has to do with my front door. This door (wooden, painted blue and white, facing west) did, in the way that depraved inanimate objects (or doors, anyway) can do, wedge itself firmly shut and then refused all entreaties to unbudge. It was encouraged to behave in this way by the house gyrating on its foundations under other, possibly malign, influences. (It's a regular concatenation of circumstances that goes back to the beginning of time. I can't cover it all here). But anyway, to cut a long story a little shorter, the movement of the house didn't marry well with the position of the door and it was shut very firmly. That was in February.
But today two fellows (not lads as I expected) turned up and expended some energy and coaxed (kicked) the door out of its sullen and uncooperative mood, prettied it up with a new lock and a new handle (another story) and now it opens again. Hey presto! I just have to remind myself. I've got out of the habit of going that way. |
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- Spy vs Spy
- Peeling the Onion
- Old unhappy far-off things
- Slightly Saltirical
- Taken by the Hand
- Childe Harold
- Eureka (Stockade)
- Superstitious Nonsense
- The Best of Times
- Sorry luv, I missed that.
- Valley Girls
- Sitting on Custard
- The Long White Grass
- I have pictures
- The Queen's Cake
- A Portrait by Hoppner
- The Iron Fist.
- Whips and Whatnot
- Showering with Friends